


More Love In A Dead Man's Arms

by whiskeyandguns



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Monster Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Solitary Confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-17 21:56:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21263405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandguns/pseuds/whiskeyandguns
Summary: Jesse McCree won't get away from him again.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44
Collections: Dead Dove Events





	More Love In A Dead Man's Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [halfcharacter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfcharacter/gifts).

> "maybe it's built of stone  
maybe it's dark as coal  
it used to be a heart, i'm told  
but a heart needs blood to love"  
dead man's arms || bishop briggs

Since they brought Jesse in, Reaper had followed him around like a second shadow.

In every room that they put Jesse in, Jesse could swear that he was there-- a shadow abnormally large or fluctuating more than the light should allow. It was rare that Jesse ever saw him solid--he was usually a cloud of smoke, a gas that made him a little light-headed to be around. He barely ever heard his footsteps. When he managed to hear them, they were hard and heavy, with a weight that seems unfamiliar compared to the weightlessness that usually seems to characterize a being that seemed more like a ghost than a man. 

He almost made Jesse nervous. Not like he hadn’t been nervous enough since he got brought in by Talon, of all people. They’d stripped him of his hat, his arm, and his gun at first. He felt as naked as the day he was born without it all, sitting in the corner of a sterile room. He wanted to pace or scream or punch something, but he knew when he was outplayed and he had been. He didn’t know what they were planning, but even if he did, there wasn’t much he could do. It was just him--he didn’t have Blackwatch or Overwatch to get him out of this. Worse, he didn’t have Gabe.

There wasn’t any getting out of the situation. After all, he knew this playbook. Jesse knew check and he knew checkmate and he was up against the latter here. He was in the hands of Talon with the grim reaper looming over his back. 

It wasn’t the first time Jesse McCree had been in a situation with very few real options at his disposal. He could only hope it wouldn’t be his last. 

The first day, it had just been him and the shadow. Jesse hadn’t slept--was too keyed up and paranoid to do it, even though he pretended he was as cool as a cucumber and had napped what he assumed was the night away. He kept expecting Reaper to talk to him, ask him questions. Grill him about something. The eerie silence, the occasional glint through the eyes of his mask was worse. 

The second day was more or less the same. There was a little water, a little food. Jesse didn’t touch it, didn’t trust it. The shadow was still there, lurking. He couldn’t make out Reaper’s form, but he could  _ tell _ he was there. Waiting for something.

Then there was a third day. And a fourth. And a fifth. He ate something eventually, he drank the water. He watched the shadow. Wondered, briefly, if this was really how it was going to end. A twisted form of solitary confinement, where he wasn’t even really alone.

At least, he was sure he wasn’t alone, he could feel Reaper there, but he never spoke, never uttered a sound. Since he had first been brought in, there wasn’t the sound of footfall, or even a single breath. Just the weight of a presence in the room, enough to make the hairs on the back of Jesse’s neck stand up when he rolled over on the paper thin cot after he woke up in the mornings, or was it nights? There was nothing to keep track of time, and it wasn’t like he had a good internal clock the past few years, not since he had left Blackwatch.

“Don’t see why you can’t just shoot me, really gonna make me go down like this?” He asked, scowling at the corner. He didn’t expect the shadow to start speaking back to him, not when it hadn’t before. There was nothing different to compare yesterday (or the day before or the day before) to today. It was all running on, and about the only damn thing he could do was sleep and sit and pace. He remembered being trained for this in Blackwatch, tried to keep his mind busy.

But he kept coming back to the shadow in the room, to the flicker of a form, the hint of the mask, the glint of an eye, shining sharp and bright when it didn’t think Jesse was looking.

Gabe couldn’t have ever been this quiet, not for this long. If he had been the one keeping Jesse hear, he wouldn’t have heard the end of it.

When Jesse fell asleep next, he was watching the shadow. Looking for something, waiting for it. 

-

There were people, a few days later, at least he thought it might be a few days later. They wouldn’t tell him how long he had been there. They ignored him, talked over his protests. They were practiced at this, but confinement had him feeling weary, and he was down an arm, so he only got in a few good punches before the needle went in.

They didn’t let him hit the floor, they had him in their arms as he slumped down. The last thing he saw was the figure stepping from the shadows, the sound of heavy boot fall, felt the clawed tips of gloves under his chin as he looked up to Reaper’s mask, before he couldn’t hang on any longer, and the darkness swallowed him whole.

-

When he woke, he thought he saw Gabe. The lights were dimmed, and it took him too long to focus. Everything was blurry around the edges. The room was similar to the one he had been in before, but despite the sterility, it smelled like creosote. He felt like he might choke on the taste of ash. He coughed, chest shaking with it and his body  _ ached _ with it. Something twisted in his chest and he strained to sit up, his balance felt different.

He didn’t know how it hadn’t been the first thing he noticed, guessed that he assumed they had returned his prosthetic, but, no.

McCree had gotten used to being without it the past, well, however long he had been there. But where there had only been empty space and a phantom limb before, there was something real and substantial, now. The arm was pitch black, inky and ethereal. It soaked up the light, and he watched in morbid fascination as he twisted the fingers of the hand around, watched them bend. It didn’t hurt, but moving it felt like a vice in his chest, something sneaking its way up through him, planting in him like vines, sprawling through him.

He had forgotten about Reaper, standing. Watching him now, through the mask, the glint of his eyes catching in the low light before he reached up to take it off.

Jesse felt a tug towards him, a pull from the center of his chest. The flesh of the arm attached to him rippled, and Gabe’s face grinned.

“Penny for your thoughts?” He asked, but it wasn’t with Gabe’s voice. It was the Reaper’s, deep and raspy, and Jesse’s head was spinning.

He knew. He had always known. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself. It had been easier to run away from it all, that was why he had left him in the first place, wasn’t it?

Reaper slunk towards him, almost floating. Jesse could feel it, felt pulled to him like a magnet. But when he tried to move, he felt pinned to where he was, like he couldn’t move at all.

“What did you do?” He asked, his voice rasped from his throat, sore and dry. He still tasted smoke.

“You should consider this a mercy, McCree. They could have done far worse to you,” He wasn’t just leaning in, he was all around him. It was making him lighthead, but it soothed the ache in his chest, the iron vice grip around his lungs and his heart.

“ _ Gabe _ ,” He choked out, sucking in a deep breath of smoke and ash.

“Don’t lie to yourself,” Reaper said, with a sneer, but he was there, right next to him. Wearing Gabe’s face, and if Jesse listened hard enough he could hear that hint of his voice. Thought that he could feel him, there. Jesse remembered what it was like to be next to him, Gabe’s presence was solid and warm, though. Reaper had nothing like that, but . . . there was something else, it was like the echo of warmth. An afterthought.

“I saved you, again.” Reaper’s voice was swimming in Jesse’s head, an echo, he didn’t know if he heard the voice or felt it.

_ Again _ , he thought.

Reaper, no, Gabe, had saved him before. From red dirt and sand, pulled him, kicking and screaming from the desert. But this was different, it felt different. There were claws in his chest, sinking into his heart. A voice that wasn’t his own, he could  _ hear _ Reaper.

“You’d be a failure without me,” Reaper said, and he was speaking out loud, Jesse was sure of it. He could hear the rasp in his voice, could feel the reverberation in his chest, “I’ll make you useful, though. You’re a very good shot. You have a good brain for tactics. You can keep those things.  _ Gabe _ ,” He said the name as if it was a curse, a taunt that he could use against Jesse (and he could), “didn’t train you in those for nothing, did he?”

Jesse cursed, wanted to lash out, but he couldn’t. Gabe’s face just grinned down at him, crooked, too many teeth, mouth too wide. It was a splitting grin, the face rippled and Jesse could see the shadows that lurked. His heart pounded in his chest, mind still reeling at the overlay of Gabe and Reaper.

He  _ knew _ , but, oh, how he had lied to himself.

Jesse tried to pull away, but his head was clouded, spinning. The smoke was in his lungs, and when he tried to pull away, the arm attached to him only reached out to touch, to grasp at Reaper, and keep Jesse pulled in close to him.

“What a shame, though. He trusted you too much, assumed you were loyal,” Reaper’s claws were digging into his shoulder, the bite of the metal a grounding point, for just a moment. The smirk on Gabe, no, Reaper’s face was menacing, as he let Jesse pull him in, as he pulled Jesse up. He leaned in, the mouth with too many teeth pressed against his. “I won’t make that mistake. I’ll make sure you know what it really means to be loyal. You won’t run from me.”

And it was just a flicker in his brain, a synapse firing. A voice, and it was his, wasn’t it? He was sure.

_ No _ . He thought, he wouldn’t run. He wouldn’t leave him, not again.


End file.
